Greece here, Portugal there. Did you know that the structural deficit-to-GDP
ratio is actually higher in the U.S. (7.8%) and the U.K. (7.6%) than it is in Greece
(6.1%) and Spain (5.8%)? Of course, what makes the U.S. different is that it has
a revenue-to-GDP ratio of only 30%, which is at the very low end of the OECD
rates which hover close to 40% or above. So America certainly has much more
taxing capacity than anyone else does (and undoubtedly will have to use it
because cutting back on health care is going to be a tough task ahead looking at
the future demographic trends). It is with this taxing power in mind perhaps that
Congress is now busy preparing for another $100+ billion budget bill (Jim
Bunning finally relented) that will revive popular tax goodies and extend jobless
benefits through to year-end (when undoubtedly they will get extended again).
Canada seems pristine with just a 2.5% structural budget deficit and a debt ratio
that is also below the U.S. However, when you tack on Ontario’s dilapidated
fiscal situation, we still look okay comparatively speaking but it’s still somewhat
of a dire budgetary landscape. <\/p>\n
If you are looking for countries with low primary deficits and low government
debt ratios then what fits that bill are Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland,
Korea, Norway, the Netherlands and Sweden. <\/p>\n
Join the conversation about this story »<\/a><\/p>\n See Also:<\/b><\/p>\n US debt levels are actually higher than Greece or Portugal. So why aren’t we in similar trouble? Simple, says Gluskin-Sheff’s Davied Rosenberg, the US has a lot of room to raise taxes. Greece here, Portugal there. Did you know that the structural deficit-to-GDP ratio is actually higher in the U.S. (7.8%) and the U.K. (7.6%) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-388173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"